Chinese football club Nantong Zhiyun suspend coach Xie Hui for drunken video, lose 6-0
- Nantong Zhiyun suspend coach Xie Hui after video of him suggesting former club Shanghai SIPG spent 12 billion yuan to win CSL
- China League One side lose Chinese FA Cup game to 6-0 to Heilongjiang Lava as coach calls secret filmmaker ‘scum’
Chinese football club Nantong Zhiyun have suspended coach Xie Hui after comments he made about a football club’s spending during a private dinner were filmed and shared online.
“Those rich clubs, like [Shanghai] Shenhua and Shanghai SIPG, are investing tens of billions of dollars. We (Nantong Zhiyun) took the fifth place in the China League [One] with 10 million,” he said in the video. “Don’t fool around. SIPG won the championship, I am in SIPG, I know. They spent 12 billion!”
The 46-year-old was assistant coach at Shanghai SIPG under both Andre Villas Boas and Javier Pereira, the latter was in charge when the side broke Guangzhou Evergrande’s stranglehold on the CSL title.
Former China international Xie started and ended his playing career at Shanghai Shenhua, where he became assistant coach after retiring in 2009. In between he played in the German second tier for Bundesliga 2 sides Alemannia Aachen and Greuther Firth, as well as Chongqing Lifan in China.
Xie was filmed talking about the budgets of several clubs including China League One leaders Chengdu Rongcheng. Xie suggested that the Chengdu club spent 200 million yuan compared to Nantong’s 10 million yuan.
Chinese football often stranger than fiction so why the lies?
Nantong acted swiftly to suspend their head coach of 18 months on Wednesday, as their name trended on the hot search list of China’s Twitter-like Weibo.
“On August 18, our head coach Xie Hui made a false statement after drinking at a private party, which had a negative social impact. After the club’s board of directors researched, they decided, with immediate effect, his position as head coach will be suspended,” the club said in a statement.
The club lost 6-0 to Heilongjiang Lava in the Chinese FA Cup yesterday in the first game since Xie was suspended.
Xie spoke out via his Weibo account, referring to whoever filmed the video as “scum” in a post also published on Wednesday.
“I attended a friend’s dinner yesterday and drank a lot of alcohol. I didn’t know that the person opposite had ulterior motives and took a sneak shot and posted some of my drunken words on the internet,” he wrote before threatening legal action on those who secretly filmed him.
“This seriously damaged my reputation. I hate this kind of scum, and I reserve the right to legal proceedings! At the same time, I apologise deeply to the teams mentioned in the words [Chengdu Rongcheng, Shanghai Shenhua, Shanghai SIPG, Nantong Zhiyun]. ”
The video has started a debate over both legality and morality of such secretive filming, and also whether Xie deserves to be punished for what he was filmed saying.
Commenters in several domestic news outlets praised Xie for speaking the “truth” with Shanghai Morning Post reporter Shen Kunyu among those to defend Xie.
The former footballer joined Shanghai SIPG in 2015 as a reserve team coach before being promoted to assistant first team coach in 2016. Shanghai SIPG wished him well when he took over at Nantong in April 2020.
He was a key part of the team as they won the CSL in 2018 and the 2019 Chinese FA Super Cup.
Chinese clubs created global headlines during 2016 with the signing of players such as Hulk and Oscar for record transfer fees.
A number of high profile players and coaches moved to the Chinese Super League for the huge wages on offer before financial constraints were imposed to curb spending.
